1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to beekeeping, and, more specifically, to a device to enable a person to readily remove, transport and replace a superstructure, or super, from a beehive, even when the super is fully loaded with honey.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the past, honey has been widely utilized as a sweetener from time immemorial. Raising bees for honey production, or beekeeping, has developed as a source of food, an entertaining hobby, and income generating activity. To provide a ready recovery of honey and wax produced by a hive of bees, fabricated hives with regular surfaces have been developed. The hives typically utilized a stacked series of enclosures, with the lowermost being referred to as a hive body, and the anterior supers being capped with a hive cover. A wax starter comb was secured to the interior surface of the hive body, one or more supers were stacked atop the hive body, and the bees were introduced into the hive. The bees preferred to live in the hive body, but stored the excess honey which they produced in the supers. Thus to recover the honey, a beekeeper had only to lift the supers from the hive and install a stack of clear supers, with a fresh starter comb, atop the hive-proper to allow the bees to continue their honey-making.
However, the honey laden supers typically weighed from 25 to 75 pounds. While the weight of such a load was within the lifting capacity of most people, a beekeeper working alone had to fully grasp the super with the arms, and compress the super against the body to permit sufficent exertion to be applied to lift the honey-laden super from the hive. The need to grasp the hive was accentuated by the bee glue which the bees collected and applied to seal the hive into a unitary structure. Such a lifting approach, however, presented a problem, in that inadvertent compression of a bee between the body and the super being lifted, as often occured, resulted in at least one, and more often several, painful stings from the offended bee or bees.
While the weight of a single super was well within the lifting capcity of two people, a substantial problem was presented when a single person had to lift the super or supers from a hive while holding the super at a distance from the body. Since a super was typically about a foot in width, by two feet in length, it was necessary to grasp opposed sides or corners to lift the super. With the hands shifted to such a distance from the body of the beekeeper, the lifting leverage was severely reduced. It was particularly difficult to lift the hive without using the trunk of the beekeeper to provide a third support and balance point for the load. The problem was even more acute where the beekeeper was elderly, or not particularly athletically inclined.
A need existed for an apparatus or method to permit a person to readily lift one or more supers from a beehive, and an even more specific need existed for an apparatus or method to permit a beekeeper working alone to lift one or more supers from a hive without assistance and without bodily grabbing the super to wrest it from the hive.